Tara Parker Pope has a good summary of recent sleep research showing that modest loss of sleep causes impressive weight gain, in addition to raising the metabolic rate! I think there are evolutionary insights to be made here: namely, that sleep is tightly linked with immune investment and the risk of parasitism, and involves immune tradeoffs involving physical activity and the storage of immunologically active visceral fat. Read Parker Pope’s article here

Late extra: A study published this month shows that sleep fragmentation affects the hormones adopinectin and leptin.

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Joe Alcock

Emergency Physician, Educator, Researcher, interested in the microbiome, evolution, and medicine